How Your Interior Designer Creates Your Space

Creating Space is more than drawing lines.

Have you ever wondered how Interior Designers know how to express what you are looking for in your personal space?

It is a combination of intent listening, asking pertinent questions and taking your needs and visualizing them in a three dimensional way. Taking those initial details and then matching within a Client’s budget. Just like a banker who can maximize return with investments, a competent Interior Designer maximizes personal needs with spacial and material solutions.

Drawing is the start and end of the conceptual process. Fulfilling the vision is obtained through managing what has been designed, drawn and approved. To expand on that further – conceptual layouts include specifics in terms of scale to the space and the needs of the user. When focused on storage requirements in any area such as a kitchen, laundry room, home office or small business, there are both common and specific needs.

Initial layouts will include not only the common requirements of drawers, doors with roll out storage, or open cabinets, but how each of those details relate, how they perform and symmetrical placement for the overall design function and style. It may look like items are placed at random, but in fact it is placed for very specific reasons.

For example, in a kitchen design, large drawers on either side of a freestanding range are an excellent way to easily access and store day to day pots and pans. An alternate of that is large drawers below a countertop cooktop with spice pull outs on either side of the drawers. The personal design is fine tuned by confirming personal preferences. In either case, the large drawers make the task easier initially, the personal preference is fine tuned and the maximum function is achieved.

Another example, in an office design, is making sure the user of the space has adequate counter space to spread out paperwork, have a comfortable space to utilize a computer, has adequate filing capacity, sufficient area for a printer and can easily access what is needed within the office space.

In a small retail business, greeting a Customer with layer upon layer of interest to draw them in, is key. Having proper display space and unique placement makes it feel personal. No matter what the application, each placement is critical and depends on the requirements requested, the specific function and style for the space.

For both residential and commercial design, your Interior Designer creates your space based on their training, creativity, talent and experience. The foregoing examples of object placement in a space are the starting point and include textures, color, proper lighting, accents, scale, form, which is brought together by using products within the budgetary confines of the project. The fine tuning of all of these aspects is what Interior Designers excel at.

Collaboratively and individually, Interior Designers take your requirements and mold them to your expectations. Sometimes it does not seem what your Interior Designer does is difficult – which for a Client is an excellent indication that you have chosen the right Designer!  

Fullfilling the vision of what has been designed, drawn and approved supports my mission statement – ‘Distinctive Creative Solutions’.

Backsplash – Make It The Star of Your Kitchen!

In new construction or renovation, making a backsplash to be remembered is often overlooked. Putting 4″ backsplash of the counter top material and then paint is a standard application. Tiling with subway tile looks clean and sterile. With so many decisions made on the floor color, the cabinet style and color and the countertop, many times the backsplash gets overlooked and is an afterthought..

Making a backsplash become the “Chameleon” is what I prefer.

The backsplash is a visual component of the design aesthetic, especially if under cabinet lighting application is utilized. It is the opportunity to tie many materials together.

For example, you have blond tone hardwood floor, white painted cabinets, mid-tone multi colored counters. In this scenario, the backsplash can tie the yellow (floor), white (cabinets), and kaleidoscope of white, yellow and grey (counters) can all be combined nicely with not only the color of the backsplash, but the pattern and scale of the material.

In this situation, a strong geometric pattern in a 4” x 8” size in a darker grey marble obelisk would be beautiful to tie these different colors, patterns and sizes together and then be highlighted with lighting.

Under cabinet lighting is an excellent way to magnify the detail of a backsplash and give it drama – especially at night.

Another method that is successful and allows the tile to stand on it’s own is not to tile directly to a stone counter, but to put a 1” splash siliconed to the countertop. It can be cut down in depth to include the depth of the tile and mortar base. This way, when you wipe down your counters, you are not wiping away grout (sand based), and there are less cracks with this method.  Long term maintenance is also an important consideration with tile.  It is recommended that your grout be properly sealed.  Your tile installer or outlet can recommend correct products for the type of tile you select.  Ceramic, porcelain, slate, marble – all have similar but different requirements.

Solid surface honed quartz and recycled glass backsplashes are very interesting.  It must work with the size and scale of your space.  Lighting really allows your application to shine given the proper lumens and dimmer ability.  Simple and effective applications creates visual zones.